Monday, January 25, 2016

I live in a third-world country (Brazil); as so, many of the materials have to be imported. I work with embedded systems development, so importing electronic components is basically a daily task for me. I basically buy most stuff from China and get free shipping, and it may take up to 90 days to a free-shipped material to get to my hards: this is because customs in Brazil are slow and tough at the consumer, always willing to tax us a bit more here and there.

One of the biggest slow-downs of an electronic product development is the manufacturing (and iterations necessary) of the printed circuit board (PCB), because it is almost an "art" and most designers don't make it right the first time.

So basically on a scenario where anything can take 90 days to make it to my hands from China, I cannot afford making big mistakes!; this is why I have come up with a cardboard-based mockup of my current PCB design, so that I can mechanically test it before sending it to the (PCB) board house.

Of course (as it is simples plain paper and cardboard) you cannot connect it to and a power supply or the like; this technique is intended to mechanically-test component collision and positioning only!.